Horses came to American West by early 1600s, study finds

By CHRISTINA LARSON
AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new analysis of horse bones gathered from museums across the Great Plains and northern Rockies has revealed that horses were present in the grasslands by the early 1600s. That’s earlier than many written histories suggest. The timing is significant because it matches up with the oral histories of many Indigenous groups that they had horses of Spanish descent before the Europeans physically arrived in their homelands, perhaps through trading networks. The study was published Thursday in the journal Science and involved more than 80 co-authors – including archaeologists and geneticists, as well as historians and scientists from the Lakota, Comanche and Pawnee nations.